Crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges spread on Wednesday after campus hotspots intensified overnight, leading to some violence and hundreds more arrests amid widespread controversy over universities calling in police and claims about “outside agitators” driving escalation.
The number of arrests of student protesters had exceeded an estimated 1,300 by Wednesday afternoon since the start of the latest bout of protests two weeks ago, as more students were detained. This added to tallies by the Associated Press and Axios earlier on Wednesday, across more than 30 campuses, coast to coast and north to south.
The further unrest came as Columbia University in New York and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) erupted overnight, while arrests were made at the University of Arizona in Tucson and at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on Wednesday, among other places.
In New York, hundreds of New York City police officers entered the grounds of Columbia University’s campus in uptown Manhattan shortly after 9pm on Tuesday night in what the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, described as a “precision” operation to break into an occupied campus building, Hamilton Hall, famous for a 1968 anti-Vietnam war occupation that was also controversially broken up by the police.
Students barricaded themselves in there earlier in the week. The protesters across US campuses are chiefly demanding a complete ceasefire in Gaza and divestment by their universities from companies with ties to Israel.
Columbia students started the current spate of protests when they pitched tents in the middle of campus, taking to a new phase of protests that have occurred sporadically across many colleges from Harvard to Berkeley – since the Hamas attack on southern Israel last October sparked a military invasion of Gaza by Israel.
On Tuesday night, police in New York arrested a total of almost 300 students at Columbia and further uptown at the public sector City College. The campuses were tense but calm on Wednesday and the Columbia lawn bore the marks of the encampment that was also removed by the police.
The tents are gone, but they left their mark. pic.twitter.com/Y1K3qkXC6v
— Irie Sentner (@iriesentner) May 1, 2024
Columbia University said on Tuesday it had asked police to enter the campus to “restore safety and order to our community”. Commencement, the ceremony for graduating students, is scheduled for 15 May and the university asked the police to keep a presence until 17 May.
And on the west coast, violent clashes broke out on the UCLA campus when counter-demonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian protest encampment.
Aerial footage showed people wielding sticks or poles to attack boards being held up as a makeshift barricade to protect pro-Palestinian protesters, some holding placards or umbrellas. At least one firework was thrown into the camp.
“Horrific acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight and we immediately called law enforcement for mutual aid support,” Mary Osako, a vice-chancellor at the university, said late on Tuesday, adding: “We are sickened by this senseless violence and it must end.”
Writing on X, the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, condemned the violence as “absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable”.
Ananya Roy, a geography professor at UCLA, condemned the university over its lack of response to the counter-protesters.
“It gives people impunity to come to our campus as a rampaging mob,” she told the LA Times. “The word is out they can do this repeatedly and get away with it. I am ashamed of my university.”
Student protesters at southern universities have also faced school discipline or arrest. New Orleans officers with guns drawn cleared an encampment early on Wednesday at Tulane University, WDSU reported. At least 14 protesters were arrested.
Police at the University of Arizona in Tucson fired “non-lethal” chemical weapons at protesters as arrests were made, the Arizona Daily Star reported, adding that at least one protester was hit with a rubber bullet.
At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, police tore down tents after a fierce standoff and detained scores of protesters, mostly students. At least one professor was pinned down and arrested after he reportedly asked police to leave the students alone.
New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, on Wednesday blamed “external protesters” for “hijacking the protest and persuading students to escalate”, saying they were known to police and were being investigated, but did not release details. He said Columbia had cited such outsiders in asking for the latest police intervention.
“There are people who are harmful and they’re trying to radicalize our children and we cannot ignore this,” Adams said.
He also said he understood that it was controversial to blame “outside agitators” when such accusations had undermined the protest aims of the majority during the civil rights movement and during the Black Lives Matter uprising after George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis in 2020. But that was what caused the situation to escalate at Columbia and become “really dangerous”, he said, while revealing few details.
The campuses at Columbia and City University were quiet and bathed in spring sunshine on Wednesday, but the shock of the night before was palpable.
Outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall at Columbia, a crowd of students, some bearing “Shame on Shafik” signs to criticize the university president, Minouche Shafik, who called in the police, gathered to hear members faculty express anger.
“We are in the right side of history. Shame on our leaders, shame on our administrators, for allowing the police onto our campus. The US is part of this war [in Gaza], it’s our taxes, our bombs, our F-15s and Apache helicopters being used to kill Palestinians,” said Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian American historian and professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia.
He added: “What we witnessed last night in terms of police repression is a fraction of what Palestinians have experienced for 56 years.”
Jennifer Wenzel, a Columbia English professor, was sitting on some steps and appeared dejected.
“When I saw that police ‘tank’ coming up the street something in my heart broke. I stood and sobbed. The trustees had broken their compact with the university and I do not know it will come back,” she said, adding: “It did not have to happen this way. We had rules, institutions and procedures set up in the wake of ‘68 and they chose to throw all of that away.”
Shafik sent out an email blaming the protesters for the need for police because protesters had “damaged property”.
On Wednesday afternoon, UCLA announced it had cancelled classes for the day.
On campus, Meghna Mair, a second-year UCLA undergraduate who said she took part in pro-Palestinian protests last week said she witnessed the masked group that marched through campus on Tuesday night on their way to the pro-Palestinian encampment, before violence broke out.
“I knew where they were going,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was so sickened and horrified,” she told the Guardian.
